So the crescendo of this to me came from his good buddy and teammate Jeff Kent. This was the turning point for Barry Bonds damage to me and feel free to disagree, this is just my perception of it..but in April of 2001, Rick Reilly…then the columnist at Sports Illustrated…wrote his back of the magazine column on what bad of a guy Barry Bonds was and it featured numerous quotes from Jeff Kent. Jeff Kent…and I can speak to this because I was there…was the real Barry Bonds! He was the real bad guy in the clubhouse. He was the one who was moody, volatile, quick tempered and difficult for his teammates.

It was Jeff Kent.

Jeff Kent was a superstar in the media because he was very quotable and knew how to play the game. The writers would gather around Jeff Kent’s locker after every game because Jeff Kent gave you insight, he gave you humor, he gave you quotes for which you could build your game stories.
Jeff Kent took Rick Reilly under his wing and filled his notebook. He gave him scathing quotes about Barry Bonds. You can just look these up, but that was the turning point because Rick’s columns were powerful in that they set the national tone.
This is before the onslaught of the Internet–slightly pre-Internet explosion. Sports Illustrated was still the Bible of sports. He creamed Barry…just creamed him. It set a tone of that’s it…it’s in stone...he’s a bad guy!

Bonds started building that image in Pittsburgh, long before he played with Jeff Kent. The perception was that Bonds was the talented jerk playing along "nice guys" Andy Van Slyke and Bobby Bonilla. And yes, I do see how funny it is that many people in Pittsburgh thought of Bonilla as a nice guy.

So the crescendo of this to me came from his good buddy and teammate Jeff Kent. This was the turning point for Barry Bonds damage to me and feel free to disagree, this is just my perception of it..but in April of 2001, Rick Reilly…then the columnist at Sports Illustrated…wrote his back of the magazine column on what bad of a guy Barry Bonds was and it featured numerous quotes from Jeff Kent. Jeff Kent…and I can speak to this because I was there…was the real Barry Bonds! He was the real bad guy in the clubhouse. He was the one who was moody, volatile, quick tempered and difficult for his teammates.

It was Jeff Kent.

Jeff Kent was a superstar in the media because he was very quotable and knew how to play the game. The writers would gather around Jeff Kent’s locker after every game because Jeff Kent gave you insight, he gave you humor, he gave you quotes for which you could build your game stories.
Jeff Kent took Rick Reilly under his wing and filled his notebook. He gave him scathing quotes about Barry Bonds. You can just look these up, but that was the turning point because Rick’s columns were powerful in that they set the national tone.
This is before the onslaught of the Internet–slightly pre-Internet explosion. Sports Illustrated was still the Bible of sports. He creamed Barry…just creamed him. It set a tone of that’s it…it’s in stone...he’s a bad guy!

A pretty telling excerpt from a John Steigerwald column -- I can't find the whole article -- a few years back in the Beaver County Times:

They were the long-time groundskeepers at PNC Park and Three Rivers Stadium who were killed by a drunk driver on their way to prepare PNC Park for opening day in April of 2002. They were both well known and well liked not only by the Pirates players but many of the players on visiting teams. They were also well liked by the photographers who work in the area next to the Pirates’ dugout.

Not long after they died, Peter Diana, a photographer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, got together with a group of people who knew Lang and Scott and decided to raise money for their families.

They figured it would be easy to get Pirates players and visiting players to autograph memorabilia and raise money by auctioning the items. All the players who were asked to cooperate did so without hesitation.

Except one.

When Diana approached Bonds, who had known both Lang and Scott, and told him about the auction and asked him to sign a few items, he said, “I don’t sign for nobody.”

That’s why Diana is quoted on the inside cover of the book, “Love Me Hate Me: Barry Bonds And The Making Of An Anti-Hero.” Diana’s quote: “Personally, I hope he (Bonds) dies.”

The Pirates know about Diana’s story and they know about the quote. They also know that’s only one of many similar stories about Bonds. One of the biggest misconceptions in western Pennsylvania is that the media dislike Bonds because of the way he treated them. Most in the media despise him because they’ve witnessed and have been privy to information about so many of the rotten things that he has done.

Bonds started building that image in Pittsburgh, long before he played with Jeff Kent. The perception was that Bonds was the talented jerk playing along "nice guys" Andy Van Slyke and Bobby Bonilla. And yes, I do see how funny it is that many people in Pittsburgh thought of Bonilla as a nice guy.

Click to expand...

Or was that image built for him?
There were bigger jerks in that clubhouse than Bonds when it started, with John Smiley being exhibit A.
But the media took VERY GOOD CARE of Smiley and lapped up every word Van Slyke said while zinging Bonds every chance they could get.
If I were Bonds, I'd have hated the media by the time I left, too.